Thompson announces campaign for State Representative race in 2020

3/10/2019

CIRCLEVILLE - On Sunday, March 10th, Lucas Thompson announced his intent to run for State Representative of the 92nd House District in the 2020 election, which covers Fayette County, eastern Pickaway County, and most of Ross County. Gary Scherer currently holds this position, but he’ll be unable to run again in 2020 due to term limits. Ross County Commissioner, Dwight Garrett and former US Senate candidate, Mike Gibbons spoke at the event and endorsed Thompson for the position.

Thompson graduated from Tiffin University with a bachelors in Government and National Security and a masters in Homeland Security. He currently serves in the Ohio Military Reserve. He has a conditional (on background checks, etc.) offer of employment from the US Department of Homeland Security.

Thompson has worked on several campaigns for other candidates, but this will be his first time running for office.

Interview with Thompson

Why are you running?

I grew up around ministry, and a lot of it had to deal with the drug epidemic. I grew up around men struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. I see it’s still a prevalent issue in the district and our communities. I think there’s some steps we can take and some solutions that can create better outcomes when it comes to addiction and the issues facing people, what’s going to actually help with rehabilitation, and help people turn to sobriety and reunite families. That’s why I’m running. But also for lesser taxes, more government transparency, and to fight for the conservative issues I believe in.

What can you do at the State level to help with drug epidemic?

When it comes to the drug epidemic, your tax money is going to be going towards grants and other funding, whether it’s through federal government or state government grants to fix and help with some of these issues. A lot of that funding is going to rehabilitation, and I have some concerns about how that’s being executed. The worrisome thing about rehabilitations is that if we’re not careful, we’re going to be spending taxpayer money on flipping beds for medical providers and insurance companies who have no care whatsoever about the actual addict. Some only care about making a profit, and that’s how a lot of this started, pill mills, and pharmaceuticals pushing opioids. Now the State of Ohio is in a lawsuit with some of them.

I believe that rehabilitation will be another tool used as a profit maker, and that’s something I’m going to stand against, giving funding to places that don’t have success rates that are even close to being acceptable. I think we need to take a look at what rehabilitation means. Does it mean someone staying on suboxone for the rest of their lives? What is successful rehabilitation, and how do we measure that? I think those are answers that are going to be the difficult ones to answer. We need legislators that know how rehabilitation works and doesn’t work, and the programs that can help and not help.